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Life long Imps supporter and a member of the Gold Membership of the Trust Andy Blow scoops an award at a recent media awards ceremony.

Media Producer and City Fan Andy Blow has received national
recognition for his documentary Lincoln and the Typhoid Epidemic which is part of a new DVD of local nostalgia ---Bygone Lincoln DVD 2.

Andy, of Blow by Blow Productions, based in Nettleham, was “Highly Commended” in the annual awards of the Institute of Videography and received his award from ITV weather girl Sian Lloyd.

"I’m delighted that the documentary, made without any external funding, got this far,” said Andy. “The winner was made in Africa and had a voice over by Joanna Lumley so you can imagine how proud we were that our local programme reached the finals.”
Andy began researching the fascinating story of the 1905 epidemic in which 131 people died and more than a thousand fell ill - exactly 100 years later.

Following the release of another of his DVDs, Bygone Newark, he gained access to letters and postcards sent from Lincoln at the time of the outbreak. They were expressions of thanks to Alderman Thomas Smith of Newark who organised daily supplies of clean water to be sent to Lincoln by rail because the city’s own supply had been contaminated. Some of the people writing to Alderman Smith described their family experiences which provide new insights into how Lincoln coped with the crisis.

The epidemic and the controversy surrounding it gave impetus to Lincoln's search for new water to replace supplies from the River Witham and local drains. Eventually, as the documentary reports, the city was granted an Act of Parliament enabling it to source water from Elkesley in Nottinghamshire - a supply which it still, in part, enjoys today from Anglian Water.

As well as filming the attractive period postcards and letters and re-visiting relevant locations, Andy traced a 1950s film of the original steam-driven waterworks at Elkesley which opened in 1911 as a result of the epidemic.

As a long-time Imps fan and Gold Club member of the Supporters Trust, Andy was well aware that the Imps were already playing at Sincil Bank at the time of the epidemic…..only a few hundred yards from the controversial Lincoln Corporation filtering beds near the Laundry Bridge at the confluence of the Upper Witham, Sincil and Boultham drains.

“I saw no specific reference to the Imps and the epidemic in my research but it must have had some impact. I’ll bet there were few visiting fans --- people gave Lincoln a wide berth at the time and even held handkerchiefs to their noses if they passed through on the train.”

The DVD was launched before the City Sheriff of Lincoln and the Mayor of Newark in the Ruston Room at the Drill Hall in September. The Drill Hall was chosen as the launch venue because during the epidemic local hospitals could not cope and the hall was turned into an emergency ward with 100 beds.

An invited audience saw clips from the hour-long DVD which also includes 1950s footage of the city and scenes from local farms at harvest time in the same decade. A whip round for the charity Water Aid raised £80 in memory of Alderman Smith’s kindness in 1905.

The DVD, price £12.99, is available in City FC’s shop at Sincil Bank along with its forerunner, Bygone Lincoln DVD One, which contains footage of the Imps in 1946 when they played away at Hull City on the first post-war Saturday of resumed league football.

Andy has watched the Imps since 1955 when he was brought to the Bank as a small boy by his father. The fixture was a midweek game against Sheffield Wednesday, a thrilling 2-2 draw played out before 21,000 people. Says Andy:” It was nearly 50 years later when I found out that Bill Anderson’s Imps were actually top of the old Second Division on that brilliant cloudless September evening. I have watched them ever since but of course they have never been as high in the pyramid as they were that night. I suppose you could say that it’s all my fault!”